Announce: SuperDateTime - Current Date/Temperature and/or Baseball Screensaver

[GoCubs]

If you select Top-25 as a conference for either college basketball or football, if you stop and restart the SlimServer, the settings for both will revert back to "none" upon restart.

Oops. For some reason ESPN doesn't associate a numeric value to represent "Top-25" like they do with the other options. They instead use "" which I also used, but had forgotten that when the plugin starts up it checks for a "" and if found it selects 0 for "None"...

I posted a 5.0.3 that should fix this... www.gregbrown.net/squeeze

-Greg

[crawler2006]

One more "Top-25" related bug... it's not clearing out/refreshing the games for the new day. (If I have Top-25 in the college basketball settings, it still shows the scores from what was on there yesterday (Thursday), whereas Big East does properly show the upcoming games for tonight).

[GoCubs]

One more "Top-25" related bug... it's not clearing out/refreshing the games for the new day. (If I have Top-25 in the college basketball settings, it still shows the scores from what was on there yesterday (Thursday), whereas Big East does properly show the upcoming games for tonight).

For college basketball the plugin simply relays what ESPN is showing for the conference selected. ESPN has their own special logic on when they stop showing a previous day's games and when they show today's games.

-Greg

[GoCubs]

For college basketball the plugin simply relays what ESPN is showing for the conference selected. ESPN has their own special logic on when they stop showing a previous day's games and when they show today's games.

Ooops. I'm wrong in this case. ESPN normally does this, but the URL I was passing in with a blank conference was returning the whole weeks worth of games for some reason...

I'll have 5.0.4 up in a couple minutes...

-Greg

[bossanova808]

Is it possible to set SuperDateTIme up so that when the player is off or on screensaver it displays:

Icon Time (12 hour but no am/pm) - Current Temp - Forecast Max

My two specific problems are:
I can't get a time that is 12 hour without am/pm
I can't get the forecast max, only the current temp/feels like

Is this possible??

Any help much appreciated, the wife likes it but this is the format she wants!!

[GoCubs]

Is it possible to set SuperDateTIme up so that when the player is off or on screensaver it displays:

Icon Time (12 hour but no am/pm) - Current Temp - Forecast Max

My two specific problems are:
I can't get a time that is 12 hour without am/pm
I can't get the forecast max, only the current temp/feels like

Is this possible??

Any help much appreciated, the wife likes it but this is the format she wants!!

The closest you can get is:
Icon min/max/prec 12hour no am/pm - Current Temp

To achieve this you'd need to:
Shut down slimserver
open up slimserver\server\slimserver.pref in a text editor
change the timeFormat line to:
timeFormat: "|%I:%M:%S"
Restart slimserver
Configure superdatetime to %1 - %t
In 2 line text mode hit up and down until you see what mode of icons/day you want. Make it large font if that's the size you want.

-Greg

[bossanova808]

Hi Greg

Thanks for that. I do use large font, so only have one line.

I can get the time now with no AM/PM and have it set to:

Icon Time - Current Temp

But I can't get the High/Precip info at the same time. I've tried up and down and various size combination, so I can see the high/precip but not then with the time temp, just a 'currently mostly cloudly' message. It's a bit confusing, I feel like I should be able to get the combination I want, but can't.

Thinking about it, it would be much easier if more variables were available in the format string, eg %h or whatever for predicted high. %p for chance of precip. Any chance of this??

[GoCubs]

Hi Greg

Thanks for that. I do use large font, so only have one line.

I can get the time now with no AM/PM and have it set to:

Icon Time - Current Temp

But I can't get the High/Precip info at the same time. I've tried up and down and various size combination, so I can see the high/precip but not then with the time temp, just a 'currently mostly cloudly' message. It's a bit confusing, I feel like I should be able to get the combination I want, but can't.

Thinking about it, it would be much easier if more variables were available in the format string, eg %h or whatever for predicted high. %p for chance of precip. Any chance of this??

Ahh... You're right. The plugin has some special logic for handling various user requests that have come in over time with regards to the large font on a non-Transporter. Basically, to conserve screen space the hi/low/prec info was dropped. BUT... to bring it back, all you have to do is:
1. Edit the Plugin.pm file in the SuperDateTime directory with your favorite text editor.
2. Do a search for: my $largeFontTimeIcon = 7;
3. Change the 7 to a 1.
4. Save file
5. Restart SlimServer.
If I remember correctly this should bring back the hi/low/prec stuff.

I personally use the two line font as shown in the examples on the plugin download page. As such, I've designed everything optimally for that. Everyone has a different preference as to how they like things to look and it's hard to please everyone.

I've thought about adding additional % options for highs and lows and such, but it gets kind of tricky. This is because the stuff on the top lines changes throughout the day... In the morning you'll have Today with a high, tonight with a low, and tomorrow with a high. Then later in the day you'll have a tonight with a low, a tomorrow with a high, and tomorrow night with a low. Each period either has a high or a low, not both because they're not both relevant (ie a high temp doesn't make sense at night because the temps are dropping).

If I made % thingies I'd basically have to have 3 temps to choose from, 3 precips, and 4 descrips (including an extra one for the current condition). I probably would have to have 3 additional ones to indicate if the temps are "High"s or "Low"s. I'm not sure how useful all of this would be to people, and I'm sure it would confuse people too. People already complain that there are too many configuration options. I have some ideas I'm toying with for my version for use with SlimServer 7 but not sure if they're worth the overhaul.

-Greg

[bossanova808]

Greg

That worked a treat - thankyou! I understand re: more %whatever - these things are often much more complicated than they appear.

Cheers, it's working perfectly for us now, the wife is chuffed.

JD

[crawler2006]

Greg,

I noticed another minor bug on Saturday as the college basketball scores were scrolling through. Saw that "Illini" was showing up for two separate games vs. different opponents. When I checked the ESPN Top 25 scoreboard online, it looks like you have both the University of Illinois, as well as Illinois-Chicago showing up in the screensaver as "Illini".

Another enhancement suggestion for your next version... more shortname alias for schools identified with long names. A lot of them currently, when combined with other long named schools aren't able to show the game scores within the width of the Squeezebox. Although difficult to do for every possibility, perhaps just for the more well-known colleges/universities?